April 24, 2008

Hello friends in the previous post i gave you an overview of the FAT file system, from where it is clear that today FAT file system is used in very special cases. In maximum of the it is replaced by the NTFS File system.

From its it is clear that it is the advanced version of FAT file system and covers all the drawback of FAT file system. The origin of NTFS came into existence when the Microsoft and IBM decided to made a joint project to improve the future generation operating system. When Microsoft starts working on their new operating system Windows NT(New Technology) then at that time they need an efficient file system that covers the major drawbacks of FAT file system. Hence the NTFS file system is developed, its development is totally depends on the HPFS file system of the IBM operating system OS/2,because its uses the same disk partitioning code as HPFS uses.

Yet five versions of NTFS has been released for their different operating systems. Their latest file system "NTFS V6.0" has been launched to support the Windows Vista. The third version of NTFS V3.0 also known as Encrypting File System. The third version of NTFS supports various new features that its predecessor did not contain. The main advantage of NTFS file system over FAT file system is that it provides you facility of greatly increased security, file–by–file compression, quotas, and even encryption. The most interesting thing about NTFS file system that you can easily convert your NTFS file system to FAT16 or FAT 32 while the opposite situation is not possible.

Now the million dollar question that arises here that when to use FAT or NTFS, the answer to this question is quite simple that means when you had more than one operating system on the same computer it is recommended that you must use FAT file system for your computer otherwise in all other cases you can frequently use NTFS File system.